Théodore de Bèze (also called Theodore Beza and Theodorus Beza) was a poet, lawyer, and French Reformed Protestant theologian. Bèze was born 1519 in Vézelay in Burgundy, France. His family was of royal descent and Catholic. Bèze was educated in the classics and law. As a young man, Bèze wrote fine Latin poetry in the spirit of Ovid and Martial.
Bèze came to love passionately Claudine Denoese. She wasn’t of noble descent and probably wasn’t Catholic. In 1543, Théodore de Bèze secretly married Claudine Denoese. In 1548, he repudiated the Catholic Church and fled from Paris to Geneva.
In Geneva, Bèze successfully developed a career as a Calvinist theologian. In 1564, he succeeded John Calvin as the spiritual leader of the Calvinists. Bèze subsequently served his fellow Christians for the rest of his life as a Calvinist leader in Geneva.
In 1588, after forty years of marriage to the now eminent Calvinist theologian Théodore de Bèze, his wife Claudine died. Claudine and Théodore didn’t have any children. Bèze subsequently married Catharina del Piano, a Genoese widow.
Bèze’s extraordinary life of wide-ranging experience and broad thinking ended with his death in 1605 in Geneva. Between 1629 and 1641, Puritans left England to establish settlements in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Calvinism deeply shaped the Puritans. Bèze’s life, particularly his early poetry, is an under-appreciated component of the Puritan intellectual heritage in America.
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